Monday, April 22, 2013

They Won't Do One Thing About It

Our politicians have NO intention of doing one damned thing about joblessness because both political parties subscribe to the discredited and debunked "globalism" peddled by the neoliberals. "Globalism" is a race to the bottom, with "first world" countries being forced to "compete" with third world countries for labor, and therefore the "first world" countries must depress pay to third world levels in order to remain "competitive" in the neolibs' eyes.

This completely overlooks the simple fact that the cost of living in the third world is FAR cheaper than in countries such as the United States.

However, high unemployment is considered a good thing to our politicians, for desperate millions help keep those who are still working in line.

I can tell you, once you are kicked to the curb after 50, it is basically over, as I noted in my blog post yesterday about what I went through in Nevada.

Economist Paul Krugman finally notes the simple truth, which is that high unemployment isn't an unfortunate side effect of a bad economy but is a deliberate policy though he seems to think our politicians are misguided in their pursuit of government cuts in the name of austerity:

It goes without saying that the explosion of long-term unemployment is a tragedy for the unemployed themselves. But it may also be a broader economic disaster.

The key question is whether workers who have been unemployed for a long time eventually come to be seen as unemployable, tainted goods that nobody will buy. This could happen because their work skills atrophy, but a more likely reason is that potential employers assume that something must be wrong with people who can’t find a job, even if the real reason is simply the terrible economy. And there is, unfortunately, growing evidence that the tainting of the long-term unemployed is happening as we speak.

One piece of evidence comes from the relationship between job openings and unemployment. Normally these two numbers move inversely: the more job openings, the fewer Americans out of work. And this traditional relationship remains true if we look at short-term unemployment. But as William Dickens and Rand Ghayad of Northeastern University recently showed, the relationship has broken down for the long-term unemployed: a rising number of job openings doesn’t seem to do much to reduce their numbers. It’s as if employers don’t even bother looking at anyone who has been out of work for a long time.

You think?

Don't expect either political party to reverse course. After all, the billionaires and banksters like it just fine that they stole from the rest of us, and they have ensured that nobody will do one thing to reverse the economic redistribution upward.